Yankees' Opening Day lineup set

Baseball season has finally started! We have to wait another day for the Yankees first game, but in the meantime we can discuss the Opening Day lineup, which has officially been set.

1. Jacoby Ellsbury CF
2. Derek Jeter SS
3. Carlos Beltran (DH/RF?)
4. Brian McCann C
5. Mark Teixeira 1B
6. Alfonso Soriano (RF/DH?)
7. Brett Gardner LF
8. Brian Roberts 2B
9. Kelly Johnson 3B

This is the lineup that was set for Saturday's game that ended up being rained out. On Saturday, Beltran was going to DH and Soriano was going to play right field, but that could very well be swapped on Tuesday. There are no real surprises in the top of the order. You were kidding yourself if you didn't think Jeter would bat second. Here's hoping that Ellsbury gets on base a lot, and that's he's good for 40-50 steals, so that he can try to take Jeter grounding into a double play out of the equation.

I think it's interesting that Tex had been batting cleanup off and on for the past few weeks, but they decided to move him down in the order. McCann makes more sense as the cleanup hitter, especially because Tex is prone to starting the season really slowly and is coming back from the wrist injury. If it were up to me, I would probably shuffle up the bottom third of the lineup, because I'm somewhat concerned that Gardner's speed will be wasted with Roberts and Johnson batting behind him.

Overall, this lineup is a major improvement from last year's Opening Day lineup of: Gardner, Nunez, Cano, Youkilis, Wells, Francisco, Suzuki, Nix, Cervelli. Pretty cringe-worthy. In fact, Gardner is the only player to make a repeat appearance in this year's Opening Day lineup. It is astounding that this team was still in the playoff race in September.

What do you think of the lineup? What changes would you make if you could?